Fragile Beasts (6 page)

I hear Mom gasp, but we’ve already turned to go again, and this time we won’t be coming back.

I want to run. I feel like if I took off and started right now I could run for the rest of my life. Never stop. Never talk to anyone. Never worry about having a home. Never care about anything except the weather.

People are staring at me. I try not to catch anybody’s eye, but I can’t help noticing Shelby. I let her catch up to me.

“You heard all that?” I ask her.

She nods.

“I wasn’t spying. I swear. I was just standing there.”

“It’s okay. Pretty embarrassing, though.”

She frowns.

“You should hang out with my family sometime.”

I study her face to make sure she’s serious. I can’t imagine anything in her life being less than perfect.

“Do you think Klint’s serious? Do you think he’d really drop out of school and run away?”

“I don’t know.”

Before today I would have said definitely not. I couldn’t imagine Klint jeopardizing his golden future for any reason, but now I realize there’s something inside him that’s just as powerful as his desire to play ball and that’s his hatred for Mom.

“Would you go with him?” she asks.

“I couldn’t let him go by himself.”

She nods slowly.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” I tell her. “No one around here’s gonna take us in. Who wants two instant kids who aren’t even little and cute anymore? And who has the room or the money to feed us? You’ve never seen Klint eat. And even if someone wanted to do it, they’d probably have to fight Mom.”

“Kyle!” Bill shouts at me.

“I gotta go.”

“Okay.”

She gives me a hug and walks away. She looked really sad. I want to believe it’s because she might miss me—not because her sense of justice has been offended or, worse yet, because she might miss Klint—but I don’t dare.

A glint of silver catches my eye mixed in with the cigarette butts and gravel next to the curb. I bend down and check it out. It’s Krystal’s Barbie shoe.

I pick it up and put it back in my pocket.

Bill and Klint are waiting for me inside the long black funeral car. As we’re driving away I hear the sound of high heels clattering on the sidewalk, and I lean out of the open window and look behind us.

Shelby’s hurrying after the car.

“Kyle,” she calls out breathlessly, smiling and waving. “I’ll call you tomorrow! I have a great idea!”

S
helby has just come to me with the most ridiculous idea.

Not only was the entire scheme absurd and indecent (I call it a scheme because that’s what it sounds like to me, a scheme cooked up between two lovesick teenagers), but she seemed to feel I couldn’t possibly say no, that it wasn’t really a request at all but one of those “done deals” I’ve heard her discuss with her friends usually pertaining to romantic couplings and uncouplings or the buying of concert tickets.

I told her it was completely out of the question and she responded with such a look of wounded incredulity that I wondered for a moment if we were discussing the same thing. Her shock quickly turned to anger, and she accused me of never doing anything nice for anyone.

This simply isn’t true. I do many things for people, although I detest the word
nice
. I hate anything vague. I prefer to say I sometimes provide monetary assistance where needed and deserved, and I do it discreetly, so I may not seem nice to the general public, but I’ve never cared one iota for the general public’s opinion.

What upset me most about her outburst was the underlying message that what she wanted from me was so commonplace that I would have to be a monster to refuse. Imagine asking a seventy-six-year-old single woman to provide a home for two teenage boys she’s never even met!

What is this world coming to? When did children start running it?

Apparently, these boys have suffered a tragedy. Shelby told me the whole story about their father and their mother and how the boys don’t want to leave their friends and their school. Well, of course, they don’t. But they’re children. That decision isn’t up to them, and it certainly isn’t up to me.

I think the man’s obituary was in yesterday’s paper. Yes, here it is.

I fold the paper and spread it out flat on my desk in front of me and put on my glasses.

Carlton Ray Hayes: the name speaks volumes, doesn’t it? Age, forty. Born here. Died here. I assume he lived here in between. A graduate of Centresburg High School. Employed by Burke Pharmaceuticals as a custodial supervisor; in other words, head janitor. Survived by three children: Klinton, sixteen; Kyle, fourteen; and Krystal, ten. Look at that … he and his wife managed to misspell two of their children’s names. Member of the Crooked Creek Sportsman’s Club and Lucky Lanes Bowling League. He enjoyed hunting, fishing, and playing horseshoes.

What? No mention of his favorite beer?

I glance at his picture. A not-bad-looking man. In his youth he was probably a handsome boy, but decades of drink and fried food had softened and discolored him. Alert eyes and a genuine smile, not the idiot grin or macho smirk a man usually wears when posing for a photo but an expression verging on authentic happiness. Wearing a Centresburg Flames ball cap and his gray work coveralls. A white patch over his heart reads: Carl.

I shouldn’t be so cruel. The man is dead. He may have been a perfectly fine man. Not everyone is meant to be a captain of industry or a good speller. The world needs people to clean up, too.

I close the paper and leave it there, being careful not to cover up Rafael’s letter. I received it yesterday but haven’t been able to give it my undivided attention yet.

I walk over to the window, pull back the curtain, and look out at the front drive.

Shelby went running off after our argument. I’m not concerned. Her car is still here. It’s a beautiful day. I’m sure she’s sulking in the woods or hiding in the barn.

She went to this man’s funeral yesterday and came here afterward and asked to spend the night. She missed school today as well. I called her mother to ask if she was allowed to do this and in typical Rae Ann fashion, she told me Shelby was already doing “too well” in school and could use a few days off to “lighten up.” Rae Ann is a former Miss Florida runner-up who wanted to work at Sea World, but married a very rich man with the sexual maturity of a thirteen-year-old instead. Her aspirations for her daughters are just as high.

Cameron never returned my calls.

I think I’ll go look for my grandniece and Ventisco, too. I haven’t seen him for a few months despite my lengthy walks and drives in the Jeep with Luis hoping to catch a glimpse of him. He’s wandered far, which is not surprising this time of year. The weather is perfect for him. The sun doesn’t get too hot during the days, and the nights aren’t cold yet. The grass is in its final lushness, and the air has a slight fall nip to it that makes every creature want to frolic. He’s having a good time and doesn’t want to be anywhere near the scent of man.

I walk to the front door and slip on my shoes and my scarf. I won’t need a coat.

Yesterday Shelby told me I dress like the Queen of England (she had just watched the film
The Queen
, with Helen Mirren), and she obviously didn’t mean the comment to be a compliment.

I told her the Queen of England is one of the wealthiest women in the world, she’s over eighty and still walks several miles a day, and she has her own navy. That shut her up.

However, I do not dress like the Queen of England. I do favor sensible shoes because at my age I have no choice, and I do prefer to wear simple, well-tailored dresses and skirts rather than pants. I also have an ancient, olive drab, waterproof overcoat with plenty of pockets and a favorite silk scarf I tie over my hair whenever I walk my property, but these are superficial similarities. Our styles are nothing alike. Her hats; dear God! Not to mention, I’ve always been slim.

From the front porch, I can see down the white gravel drive to the point where it disappears into a copse of large maples with broad pointed leaves beginning to turn a dusky red. The hills roll away from the house in waves, reminding me of the sea, only this sea is grass green and solid. They end calmly at the foot of the humble mountains that surround all in this valley. This time of year they look subdued and patchy, almost like a shabby old couch, but this is only temporary before they will explode into a carnival of fall colors.

I never tire of this view, and I never tire of this porch. It’s one of my favorite places. It runs the entire length of the house and is fully wide enough to drive two cars, side by side, from one end to the other. The white stone columns set in square bases of red brick reach to the second story.

I have it furnished eclectically with various odd wicker and rattan pieces
I’ve collected over the years, which are scattered with plump cushions and draped with fringed Spanish shawls.

My brother built this house more than fifty years ago. He chose basic red brick and white mortar, designed it simply and impressively. It is enormous and imposing and unlike many of the mansions I’ve visited in my lifetime, it still looks and feels like a home, not a palace or a tomb or a Marriott.

We lived here together for close to five years before he married the Mouse and brought her here to live also. It was understood I would stay on not only because the house was more than big enough but because of Calladito.

Even though the bull caused one of the worst fallings-out Stan and I ever had, he allowed me to keep him here. I could be cynical and say it was because after the prodigious amount of money I spent on him, Stan regarded him as an investment and felt he needed to keep an eye on him, but I think it was his way of trying to be good to me.

Stan was incapable of expressing compassion with words or caresses or even overt acts of kindness. He could only show he cared by putting you into his debt and then allowing you to be thankful to him.

Life with the Mouse never bothered me. I was deep into my mourning and barely noticed her existence.

I knew he would eventually marry—despite his unabashed womanizing—because I knew he wanted a son, but considering the number of beautiful women he’d had in his bed it was nearly impossible to imagine him inviting the Mouse into it and keeping her there for the rest of his life. She was such a strange choice.

But I suppose that’s often the case with men like him. They marry the dowdy ones. They don’t want pretty, active wives they have to keep happy and entertained or ones who other men might find attractive. They want someone to share their lives who will be unobtrusive, blindly devoted, tied to the home, and who will keep her mouth shut. The Mouse was all this and more; she also gave him the all-important son.

When Cameron was born, Stan was the one who decided he didn’t want to live in “the goddamned sticks” anymore, as he put it. He built another mansion closer to Centresburg—which is still very much the goddamned sticks in my opinion—where J&P Coal had its headquarters and moved the Mouse and the Turd with him.

He gave this house to me. It was the beginning of my fortune.

I decide to look for Shelby in the barn first. I’m on my way there when I come across Jerry tinkering with one of the tractor mowers.

“Hello, Jerry.”

“Afternoon, Miss Jack.”

“Have you seen Shelby?”

He straightens his long thin frame slowly from a crimp in the middle like the unbending of a stubborn wire. His gray work pants, shiny at the knees with age, and his red-and-black-checked flannel shirt are speckled with grease and dirt.

In the past I’ve offered to replace his old work clothes since he wears them out in my employ, but he always took offense at the suggestion and acted as if I intended to dress him in the full regalia of a servant to an eighteenth-century duchess. Eventually we agreed that I would add extra money to his paycheck twice a year as part of a clothing budget. I have no idea what he does with this money.

He takes off his ball cap, folds the bill in half, and stuffs it into his back pocket. His hair is white and thinning, and his face is sunburned the deep dark red of a farmer and heavily lined.

I’ve never been able to imagine Jerry as a boy and I even find it difficult to remember him as the dark-haired, monosyllabic, rustically appealing victim of my brother’s mines who came to me forty years ago offering his services as a handyman.

Instead I think of him springing fully formed from the earth exactly the way he is now: an old man but not old in human terms. He’s as strong as an ancient tree, as permanent and weather-resistant as a boulder that’s been lying in a field for centuries, and as patient as a river carving a canyon.

“Saw her in the barn a few minutes ago,” he says.

“Thank you.”

I start on my way again, then think to ask, “Oh, Jerry. There was a man in town who was killed a few days ago in a drunk driving accident.”

“Carl Hayes,” he says, nodding.

“Did you know him?”

“Some. Not well.”

“What can you tell me about him?”

“Well, let’s see.”

He scratches at the white stubble on his cheek.

“Think he worked pushing a broom over at Burke’s. Think he worked in Lorelei before the layoffs started. His wife left him a few years back for another man. Took his little girl and left him and the two boys high and dry. The oldest one is a heck of a ballplayer from what I hear. He used to talk about those boys all the time. Loved those boys.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know him well.”

“It’s a small town, Miss Jack. Not knowing someone well means you know basically everything about ’em but you’ve probably only talked with ’em once or twice.”

“I see. Any word on Ventisco?”

He begins scratching the other cheek.

“Talked to Luis couple days ago. Said he saw him over near Spring Creek when he was out riding.”

“That’s strange. He didn’t say anything to me.”

Jerry slips his cap back on, his sign that he’s used up his quota of words for the day.

“Thank you,” I tell him again and walk on.